This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

Tag Archives: Townsville


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2009 Travels July 8

WEDNESDAY 8 JULY     TOWNSVILLE

It was another cloudy day.

John was annoyed that, when he did his weekly weigh-in, with the scales we carry under the bed, his weight had jumped up. I suggested we do a few brisk rounds of the caravan park before breakfast, which we did.

Site at Woodlands

He went off to the Ingham Road PO, but no fan parcel was there. However, just after he’d departed from there, they phoned to say there had been a second delivery and our parcel was there. Good service from that PO, we thought. John went back and collected that, then went on to the fridge place.

The man was not there. The office lady pointed out that there was a $95 charge, before work was even commenced – and it would not be deducted from the cost of any subsequent work. It was not a minimum fee, but a fee to start work! There was no way John was going to pay that, so he collected the fridge and left. He asked the lady if she ever got embarrassed, working in such a place, and she said yes, she did!

Back at the van, John installed the new thermostat. He couldn’t put in the new fan, because it needed special welding. But he used our air compressor to blow the whole area out – lots of dust came out. He decided the fan was working fine, so we slid fridge back into its hole. It was awkward manoeuvring, of a heavy object, in the small space that was inside our van. It helped, knowing that we’d done this a few times before, and hence could manage it.

The fridge seemed to work well, through the rest of the day. Fingers crossed!

I had to throw out some vegetables that were frozen – and not meant to be – by both the Chescold of ours and the camp kitchen fridge, but was able to disguise some  part-frozen lettuce and cabbage in the salads for tonight’s dinner.

Seeing an electrical link on the fridge wiring, whilst it was out, had given John an idea. He checked the van  brake controller unit and found two such links there. He then felt there might not be enough power going to the van brakes, so soldered those connections, instead of just having the links. He wouldn’t know if that had made any difference until we were back on the road again, of course.

I had an email from (on behalf of) grandson, accepting the challenge that John had made him – to read fifty books in the coming Read-a-thon at his school, for which we would donate $10.


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2009 Travels July 7

TUESDAY 7 JULY     TOWNSVILLE

There was some cloud about, looked like we might get rain, but it stayed dry.

One surprise of our time here was just how many trains went by. The line was just on the other side of the highway from the Park, and the train noise carried across to us, especially at night. I didn’t think there were any branch lines to the inland, north of here, so the many freight, and occasional passenger, trains must be servicing places between here and Cairns. One of the things that really impressed us about Qld was that they seemed to use railways for freight, much more than the other States. I wished Victoria would do that, and reduce the truck damage to country roads.

Across the highway from our caravan park

John went to bowls in the afternoon. He enjoyed it – kind of. His conclusion – this week – was that he was not a very good bowler. Next week? Who knew. My view was that the new bowls he bought earlier in the year, that he thought would be easier to use because they did not curve much, had wrecked his game. They might not be trendy any more, but I was sticking to the bowls I’d had since starting to bowl,  over ten years ago. I could be confident that, when I got my part right, they would do what I wanted.

Some of the bowlers had told John that the fridge repair place we were using,  charged huge rates. So he decided to actually get a quote from them, and if he didn’t like it, would try to do the work himself, and get it regassed later in Cairns, if needed.

Spag bol for tea, which John really enjoyed.

A couple of phone calls came in tonight, from members of John’s family. Both long and depressing.

Tonight’s MasterChef menu involved very fiddly, convoluted items – not for me!


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2009 Travels July 6

MONDAY 6 JULY     TOWNSVILLE

Today was a lovely day – sunshine, moderately warm. There is no doubt that the weather is the main reason we southerners flock to Qld in the winter.

I unloaded the fridge, then we wiggled and wrangled it out of its space. I put the frozen food and some vegetables into the park’s camp kitchen fridge, which was not too far away from us. Everything else went into the outside Chescold.

There wasn’t as much dust in the fridge cavity as I’d expected to find. It hadn’t been cleaned out since the fridge was regassed in 2007, and since then we’d travelled lots of dusty tracks.

John drove off with the fridge in the back of Truck, to the repair place. I will not name it! He left it there because they would not even begin to test it until the new fan had come in – maybe Wednesday? At this stage we did not even KNOW if it needed a new fan, so we were not impressed.

Went to the Castletown shops, which were starting to feel like home! Made some enquiries about a new phone battery for the one I was using. Got some groceries. I managed to get into a no-appointment needed place for a hair cut, and was quite happy with the results. John bought another book about Access.

It got to be lunchtime, so John had a Subway and I bought a savoury muffin.

Drove to Jubilee Bowls Club, where John booked in for bowls tomorrow, and put us both down for a game on Friday.

It was starting to feel like I’d only dreamed Rollingstone and Taylors Beach, and that we’d actually never left Townsville  at all.

Back at camp, John had a sleep. I sewed and read.

For tea made a stir fry of chicken thighs, garlic, honey , soy and udon noodles.

Watched MasterChef and again found it really interesting. They cooked a caramel pannacotta with macaroons and a passionfruit “slick” – fancy name for a bit of sauce. But I was engrossed in the program – a vanilla pannacotta with berry sauce was one of my standard desserts when cooking at the safari camp in the remote NT. Maybe I should have termed it a berry slick?


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2009 Travels July 5

SUNDAY 5 JULY     TAYLORS BEACH TO TOWNSVILLE     140kms

We got out of that site a good deal easier than we got in! Helped by the fact that the people on the opposite site had departed early. Their large 4WD and boat on its trailer, had been parked in the road in front of the site and they hadn’t offered to move it when we were trying to back in last week.

Site directly opposite us, after departure of large van, 4WD, and the boat and boat trailer that had been parked in the road in front of the site

Won’t be going back to Taylors Beach. Apart from being unimpressed with the park, there wasn’t much for people like us to do in the area.

It was a rather routine run back to Townsville. There seemed to be a lot of vans going north. We were definitely bucking the trend.

We stopped at a produce stall near Ingham and bought passionfruit, beans, bananas, potatoes.

Woodlands Big 4 Holiday Park was the one I’d noted as looking good as we came north, recently. It was on the northern fringe of the city.

Our powered site was much better than I expected, given it had been the last one left. It cost $27 a night, after discount, for the week, and $31.50 for the extra night. It was quite large and easy to get into. There was no slab, just grass, which was fine by us. The site had afternoon shade. It backed onto a cabin and was not too far from the amenities, which were of the individual bathroom style – very new and very nice. TV reception was excellent, so John was happy, and there were three bars on the phone, so internet was alright too. The pool looked quite inviting too.

By the time we were set up, it was late afternoon. We went for a walk around the park. It had a number of permanent dwellers in a section away from us. There were a couple of rows of ensuite tourist sites, too, but those sites were much smaller than the one we were on.

The fridge seemed to have worked normally today. Grrrr!

I made Atlantic salmon patties for tea.

There was a program called MasterChef on TV tonight, that we watched for the first time. I was probably the last person in the nation to discover it, given my usual lack of interest in things TV. But I really enjoyed it. They cooked a whole salmon and a chocolate-y dessert. I kept thinking that, back in 2005, when I was trying to convert this home cook into a professional seeming remote area caterer, I really could have done with having watched a program like this! Not that I had whole Atlantic salmon – or any Atlantic salmon, for that matter, but I might have picked up some good tips for the whole barramundi and threadfin salmon that I did have up there. I would continue to watch that program, for sure.


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2009 Travels July 3

FRIDAY 3 JULY     TAYLORS BEACH

I didn’t sleep well last night. Sometime, during my waking periods, I became aware that the fridge was not behaving properly. Then, of course, I couldn’t sleep, but kept listening to it. Seemed to me that it was running for far too long, then starting up again far too quickly – even making allowances for the heat.

In the morning, John agreed with me. Naturally, it was a public holiday today in Ingham, for the Show. Rather than wait until Monday to try to find someone who might be able to deal with it, he started phoning refrigeration  places in Townsville. One gave him the name of a place that would work on our type of fridge. John booked it in for Monday.

We are going back to bloody Townsville!

He also managed to get us into the Woodlands Caravan Park – for EIGHT days! It was the V8 Super Car Race period and they told him it was the last spot they had.

I hadn’t envisaged going back there at all, let alone for so long. But I guessed, just like last time, it allowed plenty of time for the repair work and, if I was being uncharitable, for lots of bowls.

I phoned Cardwell and cancelled my bookings. The tour company said they would hold the deposit money I’d paid by card, against a future Hinchinbrook trip. Right now, that possibility seemed a tad on the optimistic side, given the way this trip was going!

I did not want to do any driving trips today, having decided to turn the fridge on and off manually. There was too much cold stuff in there to fit in the outside Chescold, and I really didn’t want to lose my frozen seafood and meat, if it could be helped.

The fridge was very iced up – probably from all that extra running, so I defrosted it. Didn’t make much difference.

I reminded John that we had a spare thermostat, left from 2007, when we’d bought one and didn’t need it. He’d forgotten all about that, but after a search, found it in “his” cupboard of bits and pieces. He phoned the Melbourne dealer in Vitrifrigo parts and ordered a new fan too, to be sent up to us in Townsville, asap.

John drove into Halifax, where shops were still open, and bought some glue. He wanted to do some repair patching to the flyscreen meshes on the poptop openings. Insects like moths and flies had, over time, gotten into the van, then died trying to get out the screened top openings. The bodies fell down to where the fixed mesh met the canvas zip-up flap. Then some birds have thought they’d spied an easy feed, and pecked holes in the mesh from outside! John cut little squares of plastic mesh that he carried for this purpose, and glued them over the holes. Not particularly pretty, but effective – and needed in these areas of midges.

Cane train beside the road to Taylors Beach

 I read, sewed, operated the fridge, then cooked barra in beer batter for tea. Very good it was, too.


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2009 Travels June 26

FRIDAY 26 JUNE     ROLLINGSTONE

For once, managed a sleep in – till 9am.

After breakfast, we set out for Townsville. There, did a grocery shop at Castletown. I also bought some new thongs because one of mine had broken, and some postcards. We fuelled up Truck. Had a Subway lunch – a treat John had been really looking forward to. Went across to our favourite fish sales place and bought three lots of barra and 2kg of prawns. I was happy that the 10% discount reduced the cost of that lot, somewhat.

Those chores completed, on the way back out of town, called in at the place that had repaired Truck, because John had been checking the bank accounts and realized that his internet payment for the repairs had not gone through. We had to wait some time for the guy to get back “from town”, then he and John sorted out the payment. The guy agreed to do a major service on Truck, if we were up this way again next year, which, at this stage, we were kind of planning to be.

That place was amazing – literally acres of (mostly) dead Landrovers, of all vintages.

Thus, back to Rollingstone. The day was cloudy and that cloud was low enough to be down over the ranges to the west. But it was still hot.

Cloud formations in this part of the country were often unusual….

After putting everything away, I went for a swim.

We then took our chairs across to the lawn area at the back of the beach and had happy hour, looking out over the sea. Very serene and pretty.

The park was filling up fast. It was the Townsville Show public holiday on Monday, so a long weekend for locals. We had a neighbor, for the first time. He had been staying a couple of sites further away, but decided to extend his stay and they told him he had to move.

In my daily trips to Reception for my papers, I had noticed that some of the staff seemed very tentative with the new computerized booking system. I didn’t think they were managing it very well – or were able to think laterally where juggling bookings was concerned. I was not sure how well these computerized systems were able to move campers around to maximize the use of sites. I’d had lots and lots of practice at that in my working seasons at Adels Grove! But we did it the old fashioned way, with lead pencil and eraser! And plenty of scraps of paper to play around with moves on. More advanced technology may not always be better…..

There were now lots of little kids around, on bikes and scooters and being noisy. We appeared to have a “compound” of family and friends on the sites across from us, now. I was glad they weren’t next door to us – at least our nearest neighbors were olds, like us.

Tea was fries and barra in beer batter – yum.


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2009 Travels June 22

MONDAY 22 JUNE     TOWNSVILLE TO ROLLINGSTONE     65kms

It was a cloudy day.

We had to do the full pack up this morning. Left about 9.30am.

I had thought The Lakes was fine for our purposes, nice and central, but John said he wouldn’t want to stay there again. He couldn’t really give a reason why, just “a feeling”. That was the third park we’d stayed at in this town. The first, behind a roadhouse on the southern edge, back in 1998, didn’t really draw us back. The second, Rowe’s Bay, I liked for its closeness to beach walking and the Strand, but it was rather too much backpacker inhabited. As we were heading north, saw a Big 4 park on the outskirts that looked alright, as we passed. Filed that one away for future reference, should we need it.

The drive to Rollingstone was very pleasant. There was a mix of the scrubby woodland native to this area, and farmland. The ranges off to the west added interest. The railway paralleled the highway, at times; there was always variety in looking out for trains.

View to the west from the highway

As soon as we turned off the highway onto the road to the caravan park, we had to cross the railway line. We were held up there, by workers installing flashing lights on the crossing. A good idea, given the volume of traffic to the park, as well as the farms and houses along the road, and the fact that – with the crossing straight after a turn one way and a big bend the other, it wasn’t easy to see trains coming.

The Rollingstone Beach Caravan park was at the end of the road, with an impressive entrance. That augured well for its standard.

I paid $31.50, after discount, for a powered site. While we were at Reception I was able to order the newspapers for the whole week. Pleasing, as there were no nearby shops.

It was an unusually laid out park. Between the office and the sites there was a large lagoon complex, and then the sites and cabins were between the lagoons and the sea. I wondered if it had been a fish farm, in another life? It was very well groomed, with lovely green lawns. The lagoon ponds were aerated and had milk fish and barra in them – lots of quite big fish. I actually wondered if they’d ever had a crocodile wander up from the sea to chance its luck in the lagoons?

Our site was fairly small, but we considered ourselves lucky to get one at all, with the long weekend for the Townsville Show coming up. There was a walkway alongside our site, which made the neighbour on that side a bit further away. From our outside area, down the access road in front, we could see the sea and distant islands.

The beach was nothing special, but at least there was one. But there were mangroves not too far away, and definitely there were midges!

Halifax Bay, from the beach at Rollingstone

After setting up, we drove back to the highway, and south again for a couple of kms, to the Rollingstone township – really just a hamlet. John had directed that his computer update parcel be sent here, but it had not yet arrived.

Nearby was the Bushy Parker free camp area. It looked a large and pleasant parkland type area; there were not very many campers there.

After lunch, I couldn’t resist sampling the superb, resort lagoon style pool. It was huge, with a waterfall at one end. The water was cold, but pleasant. I envisaged regular returns to the pool.

There was quite a spectacular build up of clouds over the nearby range.

We went for a walk along the beach towards the north. The tide was out, so it was a bit smelly. Once away from the groomed frontage of the caravan park, the beach was backed by scrub, some swamps; there were little creeks and places where the mangroves came right to the water. We could see some houses set in the scrub – acreage beach front blocks had driveways off the road we came along to the park. The houses mostly seemed pretty shack like. The beach area along there seemed rather “croccy” to me. Later, we were told that a croc had been known to nest in the mangrove and scrub area along there.

For tea, I cooked potatoes in foil in the electric frypan, with the lid on, for a while, then opened it up and cooked steaks and tomatoes in there too. A good meal.


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2009 Travels June 21

SUNDAY 21 JUNE     TOWNSVILLE

Today was the shortest day – and our last in Townsville.

There was lots of cloud about in the morning, and it was very humid.

We went to the Showgrounds Markets, for fresh produce. Found them grottier than the Cotters Markets had been, and they didn’t have many more fresh produce stalls, which surprised me. But there were enough for us to get most of what we’d hoped for.

We drove to a sports store where John had seen a 10% discount sale advertised. Bought him long and short Skins, for bowls. The theory was that these eased the pressure on his hip and he would not be so sore and tired after a game.

Drove out to Cape Pallarenda, where we had not been before. There were quite extensive beaches out there, and it seemed much closer to Magnetic Island. Some people were fishing, but no action was happening for them.

Magnetic Island from Pallarenda beach

We wandered around and explored a little. There was a good outlook back towards the city with Castle Hill behind it.

This really shows how Castle Hill looms over Townsville

The suburb of Pallarenda, on the way to the Cape, was rather an oasis and appeared quite upmarket and exclusive.

John wanted to have a look at the airport, so we drove in there. Yes, there was a car park, a terminal building, some runways beyond, but no planes. Now he’d been there!

We’d intended to then go to the top of Castle Hill – by vehicle, not walking or running, as a number of locals did! However, I couldn’t find the way, because the  road that was the access, according to my map, we found was closed for new bridge works. There were no signs about alternative routes, so we gave up. Had driven up there years ago, anyway.

That was it for the day. John really had to make an effort, these days, to do much  “tourist stuff”, although he usually enjoyed same when he did.

Cape Pallarenda


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2009 Travels June 20

SATURDAY 20 JUNE     TOWNSVILLE

There was some cloud about. I walked to the Castletown shops for the weekend papers.

After lunch, drove to the Strand. Being the weekend, there were lots of people out and about and it was harder to get parking. We had to go some way up a side street for it.

Walked on the Strand. There were a couple of weddings happening – great setting for them.

Sat for a while and watched children enjoying the brilliant water playground that was a feature. I wished I could magically transport the three grandchildren here – they would adore it.

Back at camp, I made an Asian style prawn salad for tea.

I did regret having made our booking here for such a long period. It had seemed the right thing at the time, with the uncertainty over how long Truck repairs would take, and with the busy season pressure on bookings – school holidays and the like. But the time here was dragging for me, and I was conscious of all those lovely other places we could be exploring.


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2009 Travels June 19

FRIDAY 19 JUNE     TOWNSVILLE

In the morning, we drove across to the fishermen’s marina fish shop and bought barra and prawns.

Looking across towards the industrial areas and the river mouth – and one incongruous highrise.

We played bowls in the afternoon, at the Jubilee Club. A and S were there too. I did not enjoy the time, playing with John as my skip. It is perfectly obvious to me if my bowl is too wide, narrow, short or long. I did not need it pointed out. I also knew, in theory, how to fix the next one, without exasperated instructions. OK, the execution might not work out as planned/hoped, but at least I did try. Enough about that!

I cooked the barra for tea. John went and bought chips to go with it, from the nearby Red Rooster shop.